North Market

When I lived in Cleveland, I usually made a weekly grocery trip to West Side Market.  There was a fruit vendor I frequented to the point of her eventually offering me free pineapples, a bakery whose intensely popular pepperoni rolls inspired my own, and several flower vendors which seemed to be staffed only by young, attractive women, leading me to believe that they flirted with male shoppers enough to make them buy flowers for the women they actually knew out of sheer guilt.  I haven't been there in years.

After Christmas this past year, I stayed in Ohio for a few weeks to help my dad and brother with some home improvement jobs.  We ended up doing lots of work at my brother's place, and none at Dad's, but all three of us were very happy with what we accomplished.  On the day my brother, his wife, and their son took custody of me from The Girl, we made a couple stops on our way to Dad's.  The first was artistically inspired.  The second was North Market.

Many of the vendors had some sort of samples available.  My brother, carrying Nephew on his shoulders, offered a pretzel stick to the furious primate.  Nephew was insistent on trying the dip accompanying the pretzels, but that was a hot sauce vendor, and there's no way that would end well, so my brother turned and walked away, putting the "dips" out of reach, out of sight, and out of mind.  Sadly, nobody was carrying me, so I stuck a pretzel stick in one of the center dip bowls, assuming that meant it was in the middle of some abstract Scoville spectrum.  Now my brother giggles while telling people how I started clapping him on the shoulder, crying "it burns!  it burrrrns!!"  I wouldn't say crying, exactly, but I was very happy to accept a sample of yogurt from the next vendor stall.

after the hot sauce, I was afraid to try the Tunisian Chicken.

North Market is a little smaller than West Side Market, and seems geared more towards prepared foods than raw ingredients, but that's probably a good choice for the area.  If I worked nearby, I'd likely show up often to try exotic and interesting things for lunch.  Their open-weekdays schedule supports this practice; WSM is only open three weekdays and Saturdays.

How do they keep the swan from browning?

My hosts for the day shared a bowl of ice cream; I don't remember the flavors, but I think salted caramel was involved.  That was about the same time I was salving my oral burns with free yogurt, so I admit I wasn't really focusing on what my brother had ordered.

No, there are no available samples of lobster ravioli.  Please stop asking, sir.

I don't think my brother had been to the North Market before that day.  All three of the adults felt bad that we made our visit shortly after a large brunch, leaving no room for any of the interesting meal options we saw on display.  The energetic primate in our midst was more upset that we wouldn't let him run wild.

The bin is nearly empty.  Does that mean high popularity, or small batch size?

Blockheads

When my brother took custody of me from The Girl just after Christmas this winter, our first stop was the Columbus Museum of Art.  My brother and I were both excited to see the exhibit of Lego Art (this turned out to be art both About and Of Lego).  There were a couple smaller, interactive installations on the first floor which allowed visitors to make their own creations and leave them on display, and an exhibit of models built by local students and adults.  I saw a tiny card on an otherwise empty shelf proclaiming "the Lego mouse was here," and naturally assumed the little bugger was still lurking nearby.  I finally spotted him on some moulding upstairs.

He was keeping an eye on the actual Lego exhibit, which included Cutaway Man-style models of two minifigures (each was taller than Nephew, throwing serious doubt upon the descriptor "mini") and some paintings, but I was much more interested in the art made of Legos.  Unfortunately, so was Nephew, who didn't understand why he wasn't allowed to play with anything in this room full of great toys, and was even more frustrated when we wouldn't even let him touch the ground, because that was the quickest path to aforementioned toys.  We didn't spend much time in the Lego gallery.

"Bicycle Triumphs Traffic," as it should.

We did get to see enough to appreciate the beauty of the brick, and the inventiveness of many of those who work in that medium, including several examples I had already seen in the fantastic Beautiful LEGO book, which my aunt had from the library when I visited over Thanksgiving.  I'll admit that Nephew and I both made a lot of the same excited noises in that room, and I was just as frustrated as he was that we didn't get to play more.

Detail of "Bicycle Triumphs Traffic."  The vehicles surrounding the bike were made from over 75,000 Lego bricks by visitors to a Lego fan event in North Carolina.

It's zoo again

Over Labor Day weekend, we visited with The Girl's family (mainly her nephew, but I hear other people were there, too) and made a day trip to the Columbus Zoo.  I've been there many times, most recently with my own nephew (and my brother), but I never turn down a trip to the zoo.  It's a good thing, too, because on this trip the red pandas were very active (I didn't even see them last time, and from what I've heard, they're usually asleep in their box, not climbing trees and putting on a show).

At one point, they were both high in the trees, but this was the best shot I got of the aerial performance.

Her Nephew was bananas for these guys.  He was very excited, repeating his own private words for "kitty," and trying to crawl over the fence and into the pen.  Luckily, his parents wouldn't allow it.

I am fascinated by the golden pheasants, and all I know about them is that they are from Asia, and very pretty.

The antelope were not playing, because the deer were somewhere else, and though the enclosure is large, it is not a range.

A baby gorilla and a tall, hairless ape shared this space.

Columbus Zoo

When Jack Hanna (now world-renowned animal guy on TV) took over the Columbus Zoo, it was still under the purview of the city streets and sewer department.  I don't get it, either.  It was, from what I understand, a pretty miserable zoo.  By the time I first visited as a kid, he had completely turned it around and cleaned it up.  We went a lot when I was little, at all times of the year (they have a great Zoo Lights program), and even rode the Zoo Ride bike tour a couple times.  I don't even know whether they still do that.

It was.

After GOBA, I stayed at home for a couple weeks to help Dad with some chores and small projects.  While Dad was at work one day, my brother invited me to join him and my nephew (who will be two this fall, and spent a lot of time outside the stroller in energetic attempts to catch sparrows) for a trip to the zoo.  I hadn't been to the Columbus Zoo in so long I couldn't even figure out when my last visit had been, and I admit that they've made so much improvement in that time that I didn't even recognized most of it.  Entire exhibits have moved, the giraffes are gone, there's a manatee tank, dinosaurs line a river I could swear wasn't there before, and they have a large enclosure for polar bears and (adjacent) Alaskan brown bears.

Bison and day lilies.

One of the things I really like about the Columbus Zoo is a very active commitment to conservation.  Recycling bins are next to every trash can, signs by all of the animals explain their endangered/threatened status (and why they might be threatened), and numerous exhibits explain what individuals can do to help.  (For instance, avoid anything with palm oil.  Harvesting it threatens lots of habitat.)  Even the park benches have tiny plaques telling you how long it takes plastic water bottles to decompose, and how many water bottles were recycled to make the bench.

This is a muntjac, one of the world's tiniest deer species (this one was about 20 inches at the shoulder).  It is also known as a Barking Deer, because when frightened, it will start barking.  For up to an hour straight.  Make no sudden moves.

There are also banners acknowledging Hanna's efforts and the fact that he's been tirelessly working for both the zoo and the environment for three decades.  They're calling it his Hannaversary, and include the slogan "Thirty Years of Khaki."

Golden pheasant, native to Asia, and ring-necked pheasant, which I've seen all over the US.  You can probably guess which is which.

My brother has clearly been there several times in the past few years, because he knew his way around, and often told me all about exhibits before I had figured out where they were.  One of them didn't even have animals--it was just a building made to look like a house outside and filled with simulated environments inside (obviously telling kids that something doesn't have to have a roof and a Playstation to be someone's home).  He seemed more interested in crawling through the tunnels inside than his son, but to be fair, it was dark and a little creepy there for a little guy.

I hope I never get stung by a box jellyfish.

Fun facts from the zoo:

• Binturongs are sometimes called bearcats, though they are neither bear nor cat.  More impressive: THEY SMELL LIKE POPCORN.  I was not allowed to sniff the one at the zoo.
• The Humboldt penguin is endangered because it nests by burrowing into enormous piles of guano.  When people realized guano was great fertilizer, they started mining it, and the penguins lost their nesting ground.  One in the zoos exhibit had a tendency to start squawking in long fits; others would come from around the enclosure (including the inside portion) to see why.
• There is very little fat on the apparently corpulent manatee.  There is also very little muscle.  When I asked the nice docent at their tank what filled that massive body, she explained that an all vegetation diet requires a lot of digestion; the manatee's intestine is over 140 feet long.  Essentially, they are huge, floating digestive systems.  Because they have hardly any meat or fat, predators don't bother them, and their only threats are man, machines, and habitat loss.

There's a waterpark adjacent to (and joined with) the zoo.  I suspect it might be sponsored by Kraft.  The pedestal reads: "For your safety, please do not climb on the big noodle sculpture."

We managed to see most of the zoo in an afternoon, even with a toddler whose attention can be held--shortly--only by aquaria and similar large tanks.  He liked the sea room (a few dozen species of fish, turtle, and small sharks all in one big tank), the manatees (who also roomed with a turtle named Stubby and a small school of fish, but mainly stared out the glass while munching Romaine), and the brown bears (one sat in a deep pool of water against the glass and played with his feet, entertaining kids and adults alike), but calmly waited while his dad and uncle gibbered excitedly at various birds, lizards, kangaroos, tiny deer, bats, primates, and bugs.  Then he insisted I tickle him for the entire drive home.

Urban Adventures

We recently returned to Ohio for a nephew's birthday.  While we were in town, we also arranged to meet a couple of my aunts (and two grandchildren of one of those aunts) at the Franklin Park Conservatory.

I think something's hiding up there.

We happened to arrive moments before they released several South American butterflies into one of the habitat rooms.  It was impressive to see the array of color and size variations among the species.  One of them had wings that were almost transparent, and spent most of its time clinging to the shoulder of the woman releasing the butterflies, so that it always looked to be the same color as her shirt.

My aunt eventually convinced this one to land on her hand, but that shot didn't focus as well.

There were also several installed art pieces by Aurora Robson, who makes sculptures from plastic debris recovered from beaches and waterways.  Kamilo, seen below, is made from plastic collected on a beach in Hawaii, and contains no hardware or adhesives to hold the structure together--plastic fishing line was cleaned and sorted by color, then used to tie everything in place.  The colors shown in the sculpture are all as they were in the recovered plastic. Nothing has been painted or dyed.

We identified toothbrushes, several bottles, and plastic army men, among other debris.

Some specimens were more patient for cameras than others.

This was one of the largest species of butterfly we saw.  It was brown on the underwing...

And blue on top.  I was pretty proud of getting this shot from below, without the aid of my viewfinder.

Of course, the conservatory has several other rooms, sorted by habitat.  The rainforest had three macaws in a cage, and lots of orchids.  The desert had lots of the cacti I love, and the Himalayan room had a train set populated with nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters.

After a snack on the lawn outside, we drove further into Columbus to site of the old Deaf School, which now has a small park and topiary garden.  Instead of the usual zoo animals, this topiary has been crafted to reproduce A Sunday Afternoon on the Ile de la Grande Jatte, by Georges Seurat.  A plaque shows a reproduction of the painting, and where to stand to view the full effect.

Perspective has been exaggerated for effect.  The park is not as big as the Ile de la Grand Jatte.

Some of the pieces have a little growing to do.

Characters not to scale.